See

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/archives/africa/africa.html

The point is the have the highest engergy cost per GDP thus
every increase removes some fairly critical usage.

Sure they use a lot of wood but not in a sustainable way.

Next I don't separate Oil producers from consumers since there in this game together. I assure you if depletion is quick the oil producers will bear the brunt of the troubles.
Ask an Iraqi.

The oil based economy can fall apart very quickly once its known that supplies are running out and there are disruptions.
None of the oil producing nations outside of Russia have sustainable economies. There is no doubt in my mind if America crashes hard it will take everyone with it. If the depletion in the Middle East is real then for them and the governments that do know about it to hide it is a crime since it could lead to the deaths of BILLIONS.

Finally I think it is too late to prevent major disruptions in America but look at it this way our current oil production internally is plummeting we need secure oil supplies Mexico is pretty much a goner and the oil sands won't come on line fast enough. Were not going to be able to play the invasion card that many more times and oil production in a war zone as we have seen is problematic at best.

But its gonna take a lot of oil to kick the oil habit we have to used our oil based infrastructer to create these new electric rail lines and vitalized urban centers its a massive construction project.

Start working through the material and energy costs of de-oiling america there tremendous. We will need every barrel of oil we can get our hands on when we finally wake up and do something about it.

So figure we won't do anything till the second year post peak work a forecast for say 2% 4% 6% 8% depletion rates.

Add in some fairly massive demand destruction to some extent esp in the 3rd world. We would at that point have given up a lot of our excessive usage and simply from recession.

But take a good hard look at Africa they can't seem to get out of the quagmire there in and the root cause is lack of resources to create infrastructure. It takes money to make money. If were not careful to much of the world will tilt into the same situation as Africa.

Sorry for the rambling but yes at some point times will get very very tough world wide and we will need every drop of oil and coal to make it through it. And if you remove the small amount of oil that Africa can afford from there grasp you push a whole continent that not doing well into desperate straits.

How to finish...
Get everything we can into production depletion and skyrocketing prices will take care of wasteful demand and maybe if we do this we can keep Africa going and get our economy converted.